Viridis Venenum
by illusory
Summary: Harry finds a way to cope with all life has given him. Warnings inside. Lady Stomrider's plot bunny. Complete.


Title: Viridis Venenum

Author: illusory

Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J. K. Rowling and I'm just playing for my own amusement. Unfortunately I don't own anything. Poem by Emily Dickinson.

Rating: R (I think) For suicide, a little bit of language, and mentions of rape.

Warning: Death fic.

Notes: This is inspired from one of Lady Stormrider's plot bunnies, Message: 98, Subject: 'How to die'.

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Professor Snape would be proud. In front of me lay eight different potions all of which I've made. They took me over a month to make. All complicated and long. I wanted plenty of choices though so I don't mind.

Voldemort died a little over a month ago. He's gone for good now. No coming back from near death. It was a most ingenious way to kill the snake-faced monstrosity.

I'd been captured one Hogsmead weekend and taken to the Riddle Manor so that Voldemort could do away with me. I wish he had. Instead though he'd gotten a 'brilliant plan'. Vindictive bastard wanted me tortured till I broke or lost my mind.

I think I did lose my mind.

Rape is a favorite past time for the Death Eaters. I found out the hard way. Some of them are a bit absent minded when they reach their peak though and I managed to steal a knife.

I've always been quick. Catching the snitch for the Gryffindor Quidditch team and before that dodging away from Dudley and his gang. From my uncle's fist. My aunt's frying pan. I have lots of practice moving fast.

So it was easy for me to steal that knife from some random Death Eater.

I wonder what Draco would say if I told him his father is into raping boys his age.

Voldemort must have heard what a good lay I am. One night he had me sent up to his chambers. I had the knife hidden well. They put a confundus spell on me and left. Voldemort had come and had his way with me. But I was biding my time. Waiting patiently for the right moment to strike.

I had offered little resistance and so was not bound. Unfortunate for the Dark Lord, for when he least had control of himself I drove the hidden knife into his throat. His eyes had widened comically. Using a bit of wandless magic I summoned his wand to me.

Since the beginning of that year I'd been researching ways to kill and be rid of Voldemort forever. Using the spells that I had learned I destroyed his soul and left his body there still seeping blood.

Using his wand, which worked as well as my own, I summoned a broom stole a robe of his, disposing of my own bloody and tattered one. With that I left out the window not wanting to risk finding another way out.

I don't know how long I flew, but some how along the way I managed to make it back to Hogwarts.

The potions are all sorted in a line. Red, black, transparent. All different colors. Sapphire, emerald, and sunny yellow. They could be anything. But I know the purpose of each and every one. They're all absolutely perfect. My finest bit of potions work yet... and ever. Cherry wood brown and a deep rich purple. All eight potions a riot of color.

As the red one travels though a person's body it dries up all the blood till the organs can't function from lack of oxygen.

The sapphire one does much the same though it takes away all the moister in the body leaving a husk in its place.

Transparent, a common potion used in drinks to poison the drinker into a slow death that comes upon the drinker in rest.

Cherry wood brown stops the organs in the body totally freezing all movement.

Black is drinking liquid death and emptiness. It's drinking nothing and slowly losing consciousness to the grip of death.

Sunny yellow is an acid that travels through the whole body before taking effect and then eating through flesh till there is nothing left of the victim.

Purple the color of royalty. It was a favorite to use with nobles and people of high standing. To be placed in food with a single hair of the intended victim so the food tasters could never die of it. To all those watching it would appear as though the person is choking on a piece of food.

Emerald numbs the mind, but not the body, and slowly breaks down a person's magical barriers that keep their magic from destroying their body. It is supposed to drives a person insane as it takes affect.

A draft blows though the room and I pull my cloak tighter around me.

I'm alone in an old abandoned classroom in the highest tower in Hogwarts. Through the window I can just make out some of the constellations burning brightly in the night sky and the moon full shining.

Moony is somewhere by himself. Cutting his body and tearing away as the wolf rages in its hunger.

The Dog Star, Sirius, can be seen clearly from this window and I think of my godfather. Foolish bloody Gryffindor who should be with Moony right now protecting him from the wolf, but instead is behind a veil forever between life and death.

My fault. So sorry. All my fault.

Eight vials sparkle in the faint light of moon and stars. Which should I chose?

They think they know me so well. I came back from killing Voldemort and they were so happy so bloody proud of me. I killed someone.

Did they ever think for a moment that I killed someone? Not the Dark Lord, not Lord Voldemort and not He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named or even You-Know-Who. I killed a little boy no older then my self. Tom Marvolo Riddle is whom I killed. An orphan with a past as painful as mine. Grew up in an orphanage with a dead mother and a father who hated him. A little child in awe of a world filled with magic that he never could have dreamed of. A lost man- child that couldn't understand why the Wizarding World turned their back on his abuse. A bitter soul twisted in the torment of life.

Someone so much like me.

I killed someone and they congratulated me.

I remember looking into Tom Riddle's green green eyes in the Chamber of Secrets. The similarities between us is scary. I wonder if I could be like him.

I remember looking into the red slit eyes of a snake-faced monster.

I move the red vial away from the others. It reminds me too much of Voldemort and I want nothing to do with his memory.

Seven vials sit before me for my purpose. My goal in life. To not live. I'll no longer be the Boy-Who-Lived. They can't hold me by that wretched title.

I wonder if there's a heaven or hell. I wonder if either will take me. I wonder if I'll see my parents. I wonder if they'll accept me with open arms or will they turn away from me for killing someone, for killing myself.

I wonder if my godfather will be where I go. I wonder if I can spend forever with him. I wonder if hell is the Dursleys. I wonder if hell is Hogwarts with its beautiful and misleading surface and its poisoned inhabitants that will hate you as soon as love you.

Purple the color of Hogwarts and of nobles, purebloods, so full of themselves that they choke to death on it. I put the purple vial beside the red and away from me. I'll have nothing to do with them.

Remus is going to be left all alone. Perhaps he'll like to join me?

I put the cherry wood brown aside for him. Away from the two I rejected. It's the only one out of all of these that can kill a lycanthrope.

Five little vials sit in front of me now.

Over the summer I leaned to see wards, spells, all sorts of magic. They all have a special aura around them that shows up in brilliant colors. It's like reading from a book. Each color means something different and the brightness shows the strength.

There are some really bright ones around the Dursleys house, but none to protect me from the monsters inside.

Hogwarts has a rainbow set of wards. I think Dumbledore dresses to match them. I can barely look at them they're so bright. The Founders must have been powerful.

Hermione once said that there were wards that prevent students from committing suicide. She was right. They're bright yellow and sunny and happy. They make me want to gag.

They suppress the want to kill one's self, but if a person wants to die enough there's nothing the wards can do about it. Unless you throw yourself off one of the towers. It's impossible to commit suicide that way. The wards catch you and the headmaster and professors are alerted.

I'm not speaking from experience. One of the Slytherins tried to do them selves in this year. It's strange for a Slytherin to fail like that.

Professor Snape was livid. I think he blamed the Gryffindors. Or he was upset that his Slytherin got caught. I wonder if he was just worried.

Professor McGonagall will be so surprised when they find me dead on the tower floor. Cold as the room and hard as the stone.

Perhaps Professor Snape will be happy that I'm dead. No I don't think he can be happy about anything. Maybe satisfied.

I put the sunny yellow vial aside. It would be a mockery of the wards if I were to use it. Though that might be funny. I won't be here to enjoy it.

Four more vials and I can only chose one.

People think that I show everything through my eyes or on my face. That I'm transparent.

Yet I'm sure no one saw this coming.

Professor Snape once told me that my emotions are too easy to read. He doesn't realize that those emotions are just an act and I pick everything that those around me will see.

I'm a brilliant actor. I had to be to appease my relatives and to become the perfect bloody Gryffindor for the Wizarding World. I'm anything but transparent.

So I take the transparent potion and put that one beside the red and oh so deep and rich purple one.

Three potions left to chose from.

Sapphire like Sirius' eyes when anger over took him.

The sky just after sunset as I fly free on my broom in the Quidditch pitch.

I think there be no finer thing in life then this. The freedom of air beneath my wings.

I wonder if my animagis form would have been aves. Guess I'll never know.

I pick up the sapphire potion and hold it close. Uncorking the vial and staring intently at the swirl of blue.

It's like dying of thirst.

I shiver and put the cork back in. I remember going for long periods of time without anything to drink in the cupboard.

This potion falls too close to home. Or hell since that's what the Dursleys have always been to me.

I put the sapphire potion down beside the red, transparent, and purple potions.

Some where a clock chimes the witching hour.

Two more potions to chose from.

Black and green.

Both will do the trick.

Black is like the comforting darkness of my room in the cupboard underneath the stairs. Black is like the suffocating silence of my dungeon like cell beneath Riddle Manor. Suffocating air heavy laden with the scents of sex, blood, and fear.

The cupboard was good. It was good. It brought rest, silence and solace.

The cell was badbadbadbadbadbad. So very bad. Its blackness brought nothing but pain and terror.

I push the black vial away.

I don't want the blackness. I don't want it. I don't!

There's only one vial left, but I can't see it 'cause I'm curled up in a ball and rocking back and forth.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Make the black go away.

Please?

Emerald green vial sparkling prettily in the starlit night.

Mum's eyes.

Tom Riddle's eyes. Lost boy. Lost child.

They thanked me for killing him.

Thanked me for killing a child no more twisted then I.

The color of the killing curse when it's hit with light.

The color of my eyes when I look in the mirror. Dulled and empty. Fathomless.

I uncurl a little.

The blackness is gone. It's no more and I never have to go back. Never. Especially now.

I snatch the emerald vial from where it rests on the floor.

"Let down the bars, O Death." I whisper to the little potion vial as I uncork it.

I wonder what the potion does to someone already insane. I wonder if I'm insane.

I bring the vial to my lips. "The tired flocks come in" Letting the cool liquid fill my mouth.

I swallow. "Whose bleating ceases to repeat,"

I'm suddenly more aware of my body, my magic then I've ever been before and the potion doesn't really numb the mind so much as pushes so many things in front of it that the mind is irrelevant.

I just want to feel.

"Whose wandering is done."

I'm going home where ever that is.

Magic starts to swirl around me as the barriers that I can now feel yet have never before start to fall.

I whisper a little charm without a wand to keep Remus' potion safe as the others start to crack under the pressure of my swirling magic.

"Thine is the stillest night," I'll watch Sirius through the window as I go.

I'm crying tears of blood.

"Thine the securest fold;" My voice is cracking. Perhaps my magic is crushing my voice box as well as my blood vassals.

My body aches and creaks with the pressure of magic.

"Too near thou art for seeking thee," I have finally found my peace.

The vials around me shatter and the one in my hand turns to a million bright pieces of stinging light.

"Too tender to be told." My voice gives out and my vision begins to fade.

I feel a shadow over me as my glasses shatter and I feel the glass embedded in my face running the blood tears together with the wounds.

Such exquisite pain. More powerful then any torture Voldemort could devise.

I laugh a little. Or at least try to but instead I just hear a gurgle of blood.

Then I can hear no more, but I feel the blood run down the side of my face from my ears.

I start to choke a little, but I don't have to worry about that because feeling is starting to drain from my body with my magic.

A cold numbness over comes me and I think I shiver, but I can't really tell because my body is sending so many messages and I just can't make sense of any of them.

Something is cold against my side.

Perhaps the floor?

A warm feeling starts from the inside and I push everything else aside to let this warmth through.

It envelops everything. I can hear my mother's laughter. I can feel Sirius near by.

I don't have to do anything else. Sirius will take care of everything and I don't have to worry anymore and I don't have to fight.

I can rest now.

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C&C is always welcomed and appreciated.


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